Special Reports

In-Depth Analysis and Investigative Reports

They grasp history of slaves in their hands

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske Staff writer

They call him "The Man Who Goes Under The Sea."

When he arrived at Benya Lagoon six years ago, the fishermen of Elmina thought Greg Cook, now 32, was crazy. They had never known an obruni, or white man, willing to paddle out with them in their 50-foot dugout canoes. Why then would he dive deep into the Gulf of Guinea for hours at a time, only to return without fish? Perhaps, they thought, he was after the treasure of Ghana's Gold Coast.

He told them he was a Syracuse University archaeology student trying to find goods once traded for slaves. But what does archaeology mean to a fisherman? It was the summer the archaeologist spent fishing that mattered, the words he learned in Fante, the fishermen's language, his visits to their shrines and with their chief.

By the time Cook, the archaeologist, arrived with a research team this summer, the first to excavate a Ghanaian slave shipwreck, the fishermen had grown to trust him. They believed he could unearth and save a priceless treasure - their history.

The fishermen already knew the archaeologist's adviser, Christopher DeCorse. The new chairman of SU's anthropology department has been a regular visitor at Elmina for 20 years, where he has lobbied to protect slave trade sites.

DeCorse said the archaeologist's work could shed new light on slave trade history. What's been well-documented in America is being destroyed in Africa, he said.

"The past is worth preserving, it's worth knowing about. This is part of a greater heritage," he said. "It certainly has relevance to Africans in the diaspora because they are seeking a connection in this important period. This is about the emergence of the modern world."

Like Europeans landing in neighboring Senegal and Nigeria, the Portuguese at Elmina tried to enslave Africans on the coast, but fell ill inland, DeCorse said. They learned to rely on coastal peoples to capture slaves for them, as did the British, Dutch, Danes and Swedes.

By the 18th century, Ghanaian traders were funneling so many human beings to the New World - about 5,000 a year - Ghana became known as Africa's "Slave Coast."

The archaeologist thinks the ship sank during this era. By century's end, Ghanaian traders were ordering 250-piece sets of Wedgewood china, DeCorse says, building stone streets with streetlamps and sending their children to college in Europe. They even rented Europeans' land for two forts to warehouse slaves.

Given their ancestors' role in the slave trade, Elmina's fishermen have reason to avoid slave history. If a ship sank, they avoided the site. "Shiprock," they called the wrecks that tangled their nets.

Others say they have learned to value their history from watching archaeologists. In the town of Dutch Komenda, a few miles west of Elmina, fishermen look forward to seeing the archaeologist explore more wrecks, says William Prah, a retired marine engineer.

"They don't want the future children to miss it. We want to preserve it for posterity," he said as he took Andrew Pietruszka, 26, an SU graduate student on the archaeologist's crew, to see the town's run-down slave forts. "This is not a bad history. You have diverse opinions. We ourself had slave traders."

If Elmina and Komenda can preserve slave artifacts, Prah said, they can attract tourists, especially African Americans eager to explore their history.

During the past 200 years, European archaeologists have excavated artifacts from Egypt's pyramids to South Africa's burial grounds, delivering most to overseas museums. Nick Shepherd, a senior lecturer at the University of Cape Town's Centre for African Studies, says archaeologists need to do a better job of enlisting African researchers, consulting African authorities and returning their finds to Africans.

"A lot depends on the politics of the archaeologist concerned," he said.

During his first dive at Elmina, in 2003, the archaeologist worked with a crew of fishermen but dived alone. A graduate of Indiana University and Texas A&M, he had won an $18,000 National Geographic grant. (He won another $20,000 grant for this summer's project.) He won the approval of local chiefs with traditional gifts - bottles of schnapps. He won the allegiance of fishermen with his finds, evidence of what he suspects are nearly 70 offshore wrecks.

At summer's end, the archaeologist took only the few artifacts he could carry back to the United States and promised the fishermen he would restore them. Everything else he left untouched, he says.

He worries this summer's crew of about six, including his wife and Pietruzska, will attract treasure hunters.

"Hopefully, we're not opening a Pandora's box," he says.

Like traders and archaeologists before them, treasure hunters plunder the wealth of Africa, scavenging from the HMS Sussex at Gibraltar to the British Adventure Galley in Madagascar. Ghanaian law protects archaeological sites. But as in many African countries, the government agency charged with enforcing the law can't afford to investigate violations, said Ben Kankpeyeng, an archaeology professor at the University of Ghana who earned his master's degree in anthropology at SU in 2001.

Florida State University maritime archaeologist Cheryl Ward has followed the archaeologist's work. She says his potential discoveries are worth the risk.

"The sea is a tremendous bridge of contact between peoples so it's a terrific opportunity to advance the human understanding of history," she says, and, given how competitive trade was along the coast, "this could be an incredible find."

A great responsibililty

Before the archaeologist dives, he travels to Accra, Ghana's capital, to visit the Ghanaian authorities. He pays $500 to the Museum and Monuments Board for a permit and promises to include a Ghanaian student on his crew. If his adviser, DeCorse, receives a four-year, $250,000 National Science Foundation grant this month, they will train Ghanaian archaeologists to dive, create the country's first underwater archaeology lab and explore more wrecks near Elmina and Komenda.

The archaeologist offers Board Director Raymond Agbo proof of his intentions: Two copper basins he found during his last visit.

"Remember, they looked more like stone, remember when I found them?" the archaeologist says as he hands them to Agbo. The director rubs the bottom of a basin. It was likely made in Amsterdam or Bristol, England, during the 18th century, the archaeologist says. Ghana's National Museum has other basins, Agbo says, donated by families who passed them down through generations. None is this well-preserved.

"You see," Agbo says, "it's still smooth. They were not polished ..." The archaeologist finishes for him: "They were never used."

After the archaeologist leaves for Elmina, Agbo confides that the shipwreck could be a valuable asset, boosting Ghana's cultural tourism. But government budget cuts prevent him from protecting the site. What's salvaged will be saved. It's up to the archaeologist, he says, to "lead us into our past."

After the archaeologist has been diving for two weeks, visitors stop by his rented house: Landlords Anastasia and Isaac Hooper whose nephew, Emmanuel Amos Abangie, earned his master's degree at SU.

The archaeologist offers Anastasia Hooper a brass bracelet. What is it? the middle-aged lady wants to know. The archaeologist says it's a manilla, used as currency in the slave trade.

"So how old is this?" Mrs. Hooper says, turning the brass in her hands. About 200 years, he says. "Wow, with the salt and everything?"

The archaeologist says he plans to return the manillas to the Ghanaian government for display.

"Yes, at Elmina," she says. "That would be wonderful. What was the name of the ship?"

He says he's not sure yet, but he thinks it's a slave ship. If it's a slave ship he's after, she says, what about the slaves?

"If you see bodies, what will you do with them?" she asks, handing back the manilla.

If he finds human remains, the archaeologist says he'll stop work and contact the government. He says he hopes to find as many artifacts as possible before leaving Sept. 1. Mrs. Hooper is surprised.

"But this won't be the end of it?" she says - she wants more diving, more artifacts, more history. The archaeologist promises to return.

"Good," she says, "because you need to go deeper."

To touch history

A shipwreck is a time capsule. What insects, animals, elements and the crush of years of sediment destroy on land, water preserves: timber, fiber and glass. But working on water as opposed to land leaves archaeologists, like fishermen, at the mercy of the sea.

The archaeologist stands in the shadow of Elmina Castle, a few feet from where his adviser first excavated 20 years ago. Even in his diver's uniform of T-shirt, shorts and sandals, he resembles a sea captain. He turns his sturdy frame, collar-length brown hair and shining eyes toward gray clouds shedding mist across the waves - "rollers," he calls them. The waves could carry him to the wreck, or destroy his canoe and cast hundreds of thousands of dollars in computer and dive equipment into the murky deep.

Seven fishermen fire up his canoe's outboard motor and pilot it into the lagoon beside a battered red and white fishing boat, the "I Believe." The crew climbs in, including Ghanaian graduate student Andy Semabia, 30, who can't dive or swim well but believes "with perseverance, you can achieve anything." They head out to sea, narrowly missing a canoe painted, like almost every fishing boat at Elmina, with scripture: "Psalm 25." A prayer for guidance and help.

The archaeologist's wife says they are counting on the fishermen to get them past their first obstacle, a rock jetty that stands between them and the open ocean.

Papa Kofi Arhin, the fishermen's 6-foot-7-inch leader, signals Joseph Annan at the rudder, who swings the boat sideways. Waves strike the side. The canoe turns. They make it to the wreck site and begin to dive.

Imagine what it's like to touch history, to pick up a bracelet from the ocean floor and know you are the first to hold it in 200 years. How, after retrieving such a treasure and picturing the possibilities, could you toss it back?

The archaeologist dives knowing he will have to let go of some discoveries. He has limited time and can only take about 250 pounds of artifacts on his return flight.

Pietruszka surfaces with a bottle. He passes it to Papa Kofi, who uses his thin-bladed, fish-gutting knife to reveal the brown glass. The archaeologist can use its markings to identify when and where the bottle, and perhaps the ship, was made.

As he returns from the successful day of diving, the archaeologist wonders again why the ship sank, and when. Probably between 1810 and 1850, later than he thought. It will take him months to be sure. He looks from the wreck to the slave fort, sparkling white in the afternoon sun. Then he watches Papa Kofi steer their finds to shore, the slave ship's precious cargo entrusted, finally, to a Ghanaian fisherman.